242 years today ago in a Philadelphia tavern, a paragon of excellence was born: The United States Marine Corps.

They gave good service in the Revolution, of course, but first became famous when they came off a Navy flotilla led by USS Enterprise by command of President Jefferson, himself,and stormed all the way to Tripoli.

Next they helped the Army get ashore at Vera Cruz; thereby leading to the famous couplet “From the halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli”. These were the first of what Leckie called “America’s Planetary Soldiers”. They served in the Civil War and the Spanish-American war.

“Retreat? Hell, we just got here.”

In the First World War at Belleau Wood they were so brave (Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever) that it is now the “Bois de la Brigade de Marine“. They collected the Teufel Hunden moniker from the Kaiser himself.

And so it went, China in the 30’s, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, all the way across the Pacific, raising the flag on Iwo Jima, when the going was tough, the cry was heard: “Send in the Marines”.

Bringing out their dead and wounded all the way from the Yalu in “frozen Chosen”, the amphibious landing and all that followed at Danang. The Maya Guez, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Marines providing artillery support to U.S.-backed Syrian fighters in Raqqa fired so many consecutive rounds they burned out the barrels of two M777 155 mm howitzers.

The story was told directly to Army Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, by a Marine Corps battery commander.

“Every minute of every hour we were putting some kind of fire on ISIS in Raqqa, whether it was mortars, artillery, rockets, [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems], Hellfires, armed drones, you name it,” Troxell told reporters on Monday. Troxell had visited Raqqa a couple weeks ago for a period of four hours.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, commander for the Raqqa campaign, Gen. Rojda Felat, knew she had to aggressively keep pressure on ISIS in Raqqa, which meant coalition support in terms of ISR, drones and artillery also had to be aggressive, Troxell explained to reporters.

Reminds me of something a Marine once said.

“No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”

Eagle, Globe and Anchor, a reminder to the world that the world we live in was built by the United States led by the United States Marine Corps.

Personally, I will be quite pleased if and when I walk on heavens streets, to know that they are guarded by United States Marines.

240 years today ago in a Philadelphia tavern, a paragon of excellence was born: The United States Marine Corps.

They gave good service in the Revolution, of course, but first became famous when they came off a Navy flotilla led by USS Enterprise by command of President Jefferson, himself,and stormed all the way to Tripoli.

Next they helped the Army get ashore at Vera Cruz; thereby leading to the famous couplet “From the halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli”. These were the first of what Leckie called “America’s Planetary Soldiers”. They served in the Civil War and the Spanish-American war.

“Retreat? Hell, we just got here.”

In the First World War at Belleau Wood they were so brave (Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever) that it is now the “Bois de la Brigade de Marine“. They collected the Teufel Hunden moniker from the Kaiser himself.

And so it went, China in the 30’s, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, all the way across the Pacific, raising the flag on Iwo Jima, when the going was tough, the cry was heard: “Send in the Marines”.

Bringing out their dead and wounded all the way from the Yalu in “frozen Chosen”, the amphibious landing and all that followed at Danang. The Maya Guez, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Eagle, Globe and Anchor, a reminder to the world that the world we live in was built by the United States led by the United States Marine Corps.

Personally, I will be quite pleased if and when I walk on heavens streets, to know that they are guarded by United States Marines.

They gave good service in the Revolution, of course, but first became famous when they came off a Navy flotilla led by USS Enterprise by command of President Jefferson, himself,and stormed all the way to Tripoli.

Next they helped the Army get ashore at Vera Cruz; thereby leading to the famous couplet “From the halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli“. These were the first of what Leckie called “America’s Planetary Soldiers”. They served in the Civil War and the Spanish-American war.

“Retreat? Hell, we just got here.”

In the First World War at Belleau Wood they were so brave (Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever) that it is now the “Bois de la Brigade de Marine“. They collected the Teufel Hunden moniker from the Kaiser himself.

And so it went, China in the 30’s, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, all the way across the Pacific, raising the flag on Iwo Jima, when the going was tough, the cry was heard: “Send in the Marines”.

Bringing out their dead and wounded all the way from the Yalu in “frozen Chosen”, the amphibious landing and all that followed at Danang. The Maya Guez, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

First official salute to the American flag on board an American warship in a foreign port, 16 November 1776. Painting by Phillips Melville, depicting Continental Brig Andrew Doria receiving a salute from the Dutch fort at St. Eustatius, West Indies, 16 November 1776.

And so we have a kerfuffle. It seems that the President , or at least someone in the executive branch has ordered the US Navy Sea. Air, Land (SEAL) Teams to quit wearing a patch depicting what is commonly referred to as the “First Navy Jack”.

The patch is a subdued replica of the jack shown to the left. It is supposed to be the jack flown by the USS Andrew Doria, at St. Eustatius on 16 November 1776, when the ship fired a salute to the Dutch fort, which the fort returned, this being the first salute rendered to United States colors by a foreign power. It is also the jack flown by the senior ship of the fleet on active service, That currently is The USS Nimitz, which is sort of a moot point since by order of President Bush, the Navy has been flying it during the course of the Global War on Terror from all ships.

The stripes of course, as they always do, symbolise the 13 united colonies, even as they do on our current flag. The rattlesnake is perhaps the oldest symbol of what would become the United States, it dates back to 1751, and was used by Benjamin Franklin in 1754, during the French and Indian War in his famous woodcut, reminding the colonist to work together.

As we moved into the Revolution it was a motif that was both familiar and distinctive, as well as something apparent to Americans, a wise man does not tread on rattlesnakes after all. Something of the temper of Americans, then and now, is also implied in both its warning and the use of the word “me” rather than a collective pronoun. Americans have always been an individualistic lot, given to amorphous associations as necessary but more inclined to be responsible for themselves, with a limited, and Christian caring for their neighbor, but not willing to grant that it was anything but an individual duty to help succor the poor and unfortunate. A hard people? Perhaps, but also a just people.

The most famous, today anyway, rendering of the rattlesnake motif is , of course, the one designed by General Christopher Gadsden in 1775, which is shown to the left. I also note that the Gadsden Flag was used by Commodore Esek Hopkins, the first commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy as his personal flag, It was flown from the mainmast. This same arrangement on the yellow background was used on the drums of the oldest military force of the country, the Continental Marines. It’s a motif, and a warning as well, that the opponents of the American people over the centuries have come to agree with. Most people and countries who have disregarded that warning have not come to good ends.

And I note that except for the naval use, neither of these have ever been symbols of the government of the United States, only the higher standard as emblems of the People.

And so, I find it rather petty, and anti-history for the president to deny the SEALS the use of one of the oldest symbols of the country, and the navy, sadly I’m not surprised.

It tells the story of Willie Keith a pampered young man, and a bit of a momma’s boy, as he joins the Navy during the war, and becomes a pretty good officer. Like everybody coming out of officer’s school he wants to be on a shiny new battleship or aircraft carrier, but he’s assign to the Caine, a rusty old 4 pipe destroyer now converted to a destroyer minesweeper. He’s pretty surly, and has a lot of trouble adapting to serving in a ship that looks like a wreck, and he therefore runs afoul of his CO, Captain de Vriess, usually over silly stuff.

He does notice though, that while it seems to him that a lot of Naval Regulations get ignored the Caine is always where it needs to be to do the job. He credits this to the executive officer, Steve Maryk, who before the war was a fisherman. But he still longs for the spit and polish navy of his dreams. When the Captain is promoted out, he is overjoyed to find that the new captain is a spit and polish and follow all the regulations guy. Funny part is that it doesn’t work all that well, and morale gets very bad. Eventually the ship is caught, along with the rest of the 3d Fleet, in a typhoon off Okinawa, and they are having a great deal of trouble with the ship.

Finally the Exec relieves the captain and turns the bow into the wind, with Keith concurring presumably saving the ship at the cost of a mutiny. Following on this the ship is off the line while Maryk is court-martialed for Mutiny. Keith ends up with a letter of reprimand and command of the ship with orders to return to the east coast after the war so the ship can be scrapped.

It’s a good yarn, and I recommend it highly, and like all good yarns it has a moral.

At some point on of the other officers tells Keith the secret:

“The navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.”

Think about that for a while. Isn’t that pretty much what any large organization is? If it works at all, a large organization doesn’t necessarily have to be efficient but, it cannot be allowed to fail (in the organization’s terms) in any catastrophic way. In the Navy’s case, it must win battles. It doesn’t have to promote the best man, it doesn’t even have to keep everybody alive but, It must win battles and the war. That is it’s whole reason for being.

If you’ve ever been around the military, you know there are at least 4 ways to do anything, 1) The right way; 2) The wrong way; 3) The Navy way; and 4) my way, and that comes from experience. What Capt. de Vriess was doing along with LT Maryk was doing what had to be done to remain operational while ignoring most of the rest, and it worked very well as long as they had people who understood the goals and aspirations of their unit (The Caine).

So what is my point, other than a book review of a book published in about 1948? This is how all large organizations act if they are more concerned about something other than executing their mission. They write all the details down so that a computer can do every job, but nobody has any allowance for common sense.

Sound familiar?

To me it sound a lot like suspending a kindergarten student for eating his Pop-tart into the shape of a gun and saying “bang”. Not to mention a lot of the other stories that come out of American life lately.

Mark Esposito, writing on Jonathon Turley’s blog has thought and written about this as well, and done a better job of researching it than I have, here is some of his thinking

In Maryland, a seven-year-old boy is suspended from his school under its “zero tolerance” policy because he nibbles a pastry into the shape of a handgun and says “Bang!” “Bang!” (Here). In California, a high school principal refuses to let an ambulance come onto a football filed to tend to a seriously injured player citing school board rules. (Here). A nurse at a home for the aged ignores the furtive pleas of a 911 dispatcher and refuses to perform CPR on a woman dying of cardiac arrest because she says its policy not to do it. (Here). She won’t even get someone else to do it.

These grotesque examples of indifference to any form of reason are becoming all too common as we find ourselves governed more by rules than by the judgment of people. These stories got me thinking about the need for rules in a complicated society and their limitations. It also got me wondering why wisdom and its country cousin, common sense, have been banished from most every discussion of decision making. Here’s John Maynard Keynes in his famous treatise on decision making, Treatise of Probability, discussing how to make the right decision:

If, therefore, the question of right action is under all circumstances a determinate problem, it must be in virtue of an intuitive judgment directed to the situation as a whole, and not in virtue of an arithmetical deduction derived from a series of separate judgments directed to the individual alternatives each treated in isolation.

Armed with that little tidbit, I searched the entire work and found exactly zero uses of the word “wisdom” in Professor Keynes’ detailed analysis of doing the right thing. How can that be?

Wisdom is a an old-fashioned word. It hearkens back to Solomon and Solon. To Plato and Socrates. Aristotle explained that practical wisdom is one part moral will and one part moral skill. It means a human action premised on experience or intuition that achieves the best possible moral result. Not efficient. Not effective. Not even the most profitable. But the most moral result.

At its core, it is about the time and thought necessary to achieve deep understanding. Both are in short supply these days as we measure our progress by how far we’ve gotten or by how much we have obtained and how fast we did it. The process by which we achieved these things is less important that the result. And it is this philosophy that has laid waste to ethics, judgment, and most importantly wisdom. In this race to “Just Win Baby,” we have ossified our capacity for wisdom under a steady stream of rules, regulations, guidelines, and protocols. But why?

Speaking at a TED conference in 2009, Professor Barry Schwartz examined the problem and offered an explanation in the context of a study done of hospital janitors. Schwartz looked at the job descriptions of the janitors. The explanations of employment were big on such rudimentary tasks as cleaning, restocking, and sanitation, but not one mention of anything involving human interaction. As professor Schwartz remarked “the job could just as easily have been done in a mortuary as in a hospital.” But that assessment did not match what the janitors considered the most important aspect of their jobs. In responses to questioning from researchers, one janitor, Mike, explained the most important thing about his job was caring for patients. Like the time he stopped mopping a floor because Mr. Jones was finally up and around from surgery and had just left his bed to get some exercise. Another custodian, Charlene, told of ignoring the orders of a supervisor to vacuum the visitors lounge because family members of a patient who dutifully arrived every day to be with their loved one were finally getting a chance to take a nap. And, Luke, who scrubbed the floor of a comatose patient’s room twice because the emotionally drained father at the bedside didn’t see it the first time and insisted it be done. No argument. No rebuttal. No peevishness of any sort. Just compassion. [..]

71 years ago today, America was attacked at Pearl Harbor. We were thus thrust onto center stage of the 20th Century’s biggest conflict and the most clear-cut war for liberty in the history of the world. It’s a day to remember the sacrifices made by that generation, who are now leaving us at a very rapid pace. They saved the world for freedom, this would be a very good day to thank them. In this video, I want you to listen to resolve of Franklin Roosevelt, in it you will learn much about leadership in a free country.

This is how an American President responds to an attack on the homeland.

The Arizona at Pearl Harbor: Image via Wikipedia

We all know (or should) that behind them the Japanese attackers left 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. One of them the USS Arizona is still there, minus her hull, still to this day leaking oil, and designated as both an American Military Cemetery and the Pearl Harbor Memorial.

The Japanese fleet also left behind it the most implacable foe there is, the determined and united people of the United States. ADM Halsey’s comment is an indicator: “When this war is over, Japanese will be spoken only in Hell”. It nearly came to that. The casualty projections for the invasion of Japan ran to over 1 Million American casualties only, the only other alternatives were for the Navy to starve the entire country while the Air Force burned it down. Every American (and Japanese) should thank their God for the Atom Bomb for this was the future it prevented. And as the Confederate Air Force has said: “There would have been no Hiroshima without Pearl Harbor”.

It probably should be noted that nearly the entire Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, and Royal Australian Navy, as well as the US Atlantic Fleet were in the process of joining the US Pacific fleet, which had long since become (by far) the most powerful fleet in the history of the world. Also transhipping were the Allied armies that had defeated Nazi Germany. Götterdämmerung had come for the Japanese as it had for the Germans before them. The implacable free people of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, the Philippine Islands, and even Soviet Russia had made the world (mostly) free, again.

We live in a world shaped by tragedies inflicted on the United States, 9/11 has been very influential in our lives but, Pearl Harbor is even more so. It taught us again that freedom is never free, if we don’t defend it, it will pass as it did, for a time, for many of our allies. It also taught us that when America leads anything is possible.

The Surrender in Tokyo Bay: Image via Wikipedia

The Pacific Campaign was marked by a series of terrible battles in some of the most inhospitable of climates. Who can forget the battles that followed Pearl Harbor: Guadalcanal, the Coral Sea, The Mitchell raid, Corregidor and the Bataan Death march, Midway, the Marianas, Tarawa, the Liberation of the Philippines, Iwo Jima and the flag, Okinawa, and that final scene in Tokyo Bay, where MacArthur and Wainwright accepted the Japanese surrender on the deck of one of the most powerful battleships ever built: The USS Missouri. All of this happened in only 44 Months.

Image via Wikipedia

People my age knew the men who fought all those battles, they were our heroes. Combat may not have been realistic but it fired our admiration. Ensign George Gay, the sole survivor of Torpron 8 at Midway, grew up about 10 miles from where I did. They deserve our memories today, because 71 years ago they started the counterattack that built the free (and mostly peaceful) world we have known all our life. We seldom remember that the Pax Americana has mostly held since 1945, we owe a debt to those men (and women), our parents (and mostly grandparents now) that we will never be able to repay except by keeping the peace and freedom they won.

A Reminder of Our Heritage

“Every man, who parrots the cry of ‘stand by the President’ without adding the proviso ‘so far as he serves the Republic’ takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.”